NORWEGIAN TRAGEDY - COLLAPSE OF MULTICULTURALISM OR...

Norway is still in shock. Tragedies like the one that hit the country on 22 July had not been seen since the Second World War.

The world media repeatedly expounded on the chronology of the terrible tragedy. According to the Russian newspaper Izvestiya, on the morning of 22 July, the terrorist Anders Breivik dressed in a police uniform, took a Glock semi-automatic pistol and a Ruger Mini 14 assault rifle and headed for central Oslo with a car bomb. He parked the car in the government quarter and then blew it up. As a result, seven people were killed and another 90 injured. According to preliminary reports, the bomb was made from the agricultural fertilizer ammonium nitrate and diesel fuel. Representatives of Norway's major chain of agricultural stores reported to the police that on 4 May, they sold six tonnes of fertilizers to several men, including Breivik, who had a farm, Breivik Geofarm, in the village of Rena.

After the explosion, Breivik went by ferry to the island of Utoya, where the youth wing of the Norwegian Labour Party (NLP), led by Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg, had gathered. He showed the guards a fake police ID and said he had been instructed to check the security system on the island after the explosion in the capital. The guards even called a boat from the camp to take the terrorist to the island. At that point, the media mentioned Al-Qaeda threats against Norway for its participation in operations in Afghanistan and Gaddafi's promises to "punish" the countries that are involved in operations against Libya, but the tall, blue-eyed blond of Nordic appearance caused no suspicion in police officers.

It was here that the tragedy reached its peak. Breivik entered the main building, where about a hundred people had gathered, and opened heavy fire on them. Young people tried to flee, but very few succeeded. The terrorist finished off teenagers who were hiding and wounded. Some escaped by jumping into the water and swimming away from the island. By the time the police managed to arrest Breivik, he had already killed 69 people.

The Norwegian public have some questions about the tragedy. They were shocked by the unprofessional behaviour of their own police: Breivik continued to kill for one and a half hours. But on seeing the police, he put his gun down and surrendered. When Breivik fired his first bullet, witnesses immediately began to call the "hot line", but calls from the island of Utoya were not accepted for 30 minutes: operators were focused on the situation in Oslo and rejected all calls from other regions.

Only half an hour later did the Norwegian police finally realize that a killer was operating on the island. It appeared, however, that the Delta anti-terrorist brigade, called from Oslo, could not get to the scene quickly as the Norwegian law-enforcers had only one police helicopter and all pilots were on leave. Soldiers of the Norwegian special forces had to reach Utoya by car. After reaching the lake, the police boarded a boat, but the engine stalled. When they started the engine and set off, they found out that the boat was overloaded and was about to sink. All this time, gunshots and children's screams could be heard 500 metres away on the island.

It is particularly difficult to find an answer to the question: how was this possible? Why did an ordinary guy, who was born in one of the most prosperous Western countries, have so much hatred?

Breivik's 1,500-page "manifesto", which many say was full of hate for anything non-Scandinavian, came as a real shock. The 32-year-old farmer considered himself an heir to the "Knights Templar" and was ready to rid Europe of the "Islamic threat". He admired Geert Wilders, a notorious Dutch politician, talked about his "brotherhood", etc. According to some media reports, Breivik also mentioned the "Armenian genocide", declaring: "Throughout history, Turks have exterminated millions of Christians and forcibly Islamized hundreds of thousands. The Turks are the most genocidal nation. They carried out genocide against Armenians, Greeks and Assyrians." As for Turkey's EU membership, according to Breivik, promoting it is tantamount to promoting jihad.

Why establish relations with a country that wants to destroy us, he says, noting that Turkey should also be banished from NATO.

"If the US expels Turkey and Albania from NATO, the alliance can prolong its existence," Breivik says.

Further, he says that the Armenians should get their "homeland" back. "The territory of the so-called Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus should be returned to the Cypriot Greeks, so-called Eastern Anatolia - to Armenians and Western Anatolia - to Greece. To Christianize this territory, it is necessary to start a war. And before hostilities, it is necessary to destroy Pakistan's nuclear weapons, because they can offer them to Turkey," says Anders Behring Breivik.

However, Breivik went on a shooting spree not in the immigrant neighbourhoods of Oslo, but in the youth camp of the ruling party. And the majority of his victims are not immigrants.

According to the editor-in-chief of Norway Post, Rolleiv Solhom, Breivik attacked the camp on the island of Utoya because it was considered the "cradle from which the future leaders of the ruling NLP grow". Solhom noted in an interview with Nezavisimaya Gazeta that Breivik opposed government policies on immigration and cooperation with "non-white" countries (obviously, including Azerbaijan, with which Norway has established very fruitful cooperation in the oil and humanitarian spheres).

Many experts are anxiously discussing another aspect of the issue: Breivik's "manifesto" was frighteningly in tune with what is being openly spoken about in Europe. For many years, experts have been talking about a dangerous rise in the popularity of ultra-right parties and movements. The National Front in France is ready to challenge the Socialists and neo-Gaullists. The ultra-right politicians of Denmark, the Netherlands and Sweden are increasing the number of their seats in parliament and openly demanding tougher immigration laws to bar immigrants from the Middle East and North Africa from their countries.

Not only marginal groups are making such statements in today's Europe. The German public is still reeling from the scandal over a book by a Bundesbank board member, Thilo Sarrazin, who was forced to resign because of "anti-Muslim" remarks. At the same time, German Chancellor Angela Merkel issued a statement, which became a worldwide sensation: addressing a Christian Democratic youth conference, the head of the German government announced the "absolute failure" of the policy of multiculturalism.

"This multicultural approach according to which we simply live side by side and everyone is happy has completely failed," Merkel said. The chancellor stressed that Germany welcomes immigration, but immigrants should learn German and get an education in German schools. The hint was too clear: about four million Muslims live in Germany, and they constitute five per cent of the population and do not appear too keen to integrate into German society and culture.

After a few weeks, French President Nicolas Sarkozy said that the multicultural model of Europe was a "failure". "It is a failure. The problem was that in all our democracies, we were too concerned about the identity of those who arrived and not enough about the identity of the country welcoming them," he said in answer to a question about multiculturalism during his appearance on TF1. "We do not want, at any rate it is not France's intention, to have communities that co-exist next to each other. When you live in France you have to agree to meld into one community - the national community. And if you don't agree to that you cannot be welcomed in France," the president stressed. In turn, British Prime Minister David Cameron also stressed that "the doctrine of state multiculturalism", which encouraged "different cultures to live separately from each other", has failed miserably. "Frankly, we need a lot less of the passive tolerance of recent years," the British prime minister said, drawing parallels between this failure and the rise in Islamic extremism.

Experts point out that although Europe brings in masses of immigrants, there is no real integration here. Immigrant communities continue to exist as a "state within a state", and contacts between the "incomers" and "locals" are minimal. All sorts of criminal and radical groups, which impose a tax on traders and create terrorist networks, act freely within communities. In addition, the Europeans are unlikely to be delighted with immigrant neighbourhoods that resemble the Middle East rather than Europe.

At the same time, the riots in the immigrant neighbourhoods of Paris a few years ago, which are reminiscent of what happened on the streets of London in August, revealed another problem: immigrants are willing to integrate, but the local community is not ready to accept them as equals. Simply put, in the same Paris and Lyon, people have become accustomed to the fact that nurses in hospitals or cleaners on the street can be immigrants, but do not expect that tomorrow the children of cleaners and nurses will also want to be doctors, lawyers, journalists ... No, there were no legal restrictions here, but society's reaction was bound to be felt, not to mention the fact that any society can take "migrants" only to a certain extent - as long as their proportion in the population does not exceed 21 per cent. And then talk about "cultural identity" and the need to tighten the visa barrier becomes a matter of time.

Europe, it seems, could not even imagine in its worst nightmare how thin the line between statements about the "protection of cultural identity" and Breivik's monstrous cruelty would be. The latter, like all fascists, fired not only at those who were born with the wrong skin colour, but also at those who imagined and saw the future of their country differently than he did.